Heather Broster
If you’ve only just arrived in Italy and your vocabulary hasn’t progressed far beyond ciao and grazie, there is a survival phrase you should definitely make an effort to learn: Do you speak English? Italian has both formal and informal registers, so if you’re addressing a stranger on the street or in a shop, the …
There are literally hundreds of words in the English language that sound or look similar to their Italian equivalents. This is because English has been heavily influenced by Latinate and Romance sources, such as French and Anglo-Norman, ever since the Early Middle Ages. In this article, I’m not going to be investigating Italian-sounding words that …
English speakers are taught from an early age that putting more than one negative in a sentence is grammatically incorrect. In fact, I’m sure my English teacher would have spontaneously combusted had I ever written “I don’t have nothing,” in one of my essays! Not so in Italian! In the language of love, it is …
As languages go, I would classify Italian as one of the easiest to learn for English speakers, at least in terms of pronunciation. A big advantage is that it is a highly phonetic language – unlike English and French, for example – so what you see written on paper is very close to how it …
The Italian word for rainbow is arcobaleno (plural: arcobaleni). l’arcobalenoun arcobaleno gli arcobalenidegli arcobaleni It is composed of two words: arco (arch) and baleno (flash, flare). Ho visto un arcobaleno dopo il temporale. I saw a rainbow after the storm. The seven colours of the rainbow (sette colori dell’arcobaleno) are as follows: A rainbow is …
The word faccia (plural: facce) in Italian is the most widely used term for face. la facciauna faccia le faccedelle facce Mi sono lavato la faccia stamattina. I washed my face this morning. Below are the main componants that make up a human face: It is used in both the literal, anatomical sense of the …